Watchmen is a twelve-issue comic book limited series written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and colored by John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987, and later collected into a single graphic novel that has never gone out of print. The story is set in an alternate 1985 where costumed vigilantes were once common but have since been outlawed, and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. When a former government-sponsored hero is murdered, a group of retired and outlawed vigilantes reunite to investigate a conspiracy that threatens everything they know.
The series is renowned for its sophisticated narrative structure, including a nine-panel grid layout, recurring visual motifs like the blood-stained smiley face, and the inclusion of an in-story pirate comic called Tales of the Black Freighter. Moore and Gibbons used the superhero genre as a vehicle to deconstruct the very concept of heroism, exploring themes of power, morality, time, and the human condition. The characters were originally based on the Charlton Comics heroes DC had recently acquired, but were reimagined as original creations to allow for a more definitive and uncompromising story.
Watchmen is widely considered one of the greatest graphic novels ever written. It was the only graphic novel to appear on Time magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present, and it fundamentally changed the perception of what the comic book medium could achieve. Its critical and commercial success helped usher in an era of darker, more psychologically complex superhero stories across all media.